Duronius lunged forward, his lance rocketing towards Leon. Leon dodged with a swift side-step, then sprang toward the Duke. His lightning magic allowed him to close the distance, but his blade slid off the Duke’s armor. That wasn’t enough to make Leon give up, though, and instead of pulling back to make another strike, he kept moving forward and threw his shoulder into the older man.

Duronius was elderly, closing in on three centuries old. But he was a sixth-tier mage, and for all the accumulated aches and pains of his life, he wasn’t yet crippled by age-related infirmities and had the combined experience of all those years to back him up. He stood strong against Leon’s shoulder check, but with Leon now too close for him to use his lance properly, he recalled the weapon into his soul realm and began grappling with the younger man.

Their fight became a messy tangle of limbs for the next few seconds, in which Duronius had the advantage. Lightning magic gave Leon unparalleled speed and explosive magical power, but in terms of sheer physical might, nothing could hold a candle to earth magic, of which Duronius was a practitioner. Leon’s attempts to lock down his limbs ended in failure as Duronius simply overpowered him at every turn.

To Leon, it felt a lot like Duronius wasn’t taking their fight seriously, and that was infuriating. With another blast of lightning, Leon threw Duronius back and regained a bit of distance, which he then used to re-engage with his blade. He’d learned in these few exchanges that he wasn’t going to beat the man in a hand-to-hand duel, so he’d have to rely upon his skills with the blade and the magical arts.

His lightning strike did little damage to the Duke, but his follow-up stab bit into the Duke’s forearm where his gauntlet met his pauldron, slicing through the mail and cloth padding beneath. Leon withdrew the blade before Duronius could counter, and he was gratified to see blood wetting the end of his blade, but only a moment later a rock spike burst from the ground behind him and slammed into his back. His armor held, but all the wind was knocked from him again, and he was thrown almost into Duronius’ arms.

“Idiot boy!” Duronius bellowed as he grabbed Leon by the shoulders and lifted him into the air. Leon fired off a burst of lightning, succeeding in getting the Duke to let him go, but he landed hard enough that Duronius was able to kick him in the chest, hurling him back a dozen feet.

A moment later, Duronius conjured a mace from his soul realm, a weapon that Leon’s armor would have a hard time defending against. What was worse, it pulsed with earth runes, causing the metal to subtly warp and twist and create vicious flanges along the mace head, making it just that much more deadly.

Duronius roared, “Something so rude and uncouth as you ought to be lanced, but since you’ve festered long enough to develop a hard shell, I suppose I’m just going to pop you like a blister!” With that, Duronius launched himself at Leon using the stone beneath his feet, almost like a rock from a catapult.

Leon was still too stunned from the repeated blows to the chest, and so he couldn’t react with quite as much alacrity as he would’ve otherwise. He was still able to raise his blade and block, but the force carried by Duronius’ mace was tremendous, causing him to almost drop his sword. Duronius’ follow-up swing forced him back again.

For the next few seconds, Leon focused on dodging. He’d learned that he wasn’t stronger than Duronius and that trying to fight him in a straight fight would only end with his loss.

“You know,” Duronius began between swings as Leon danced around him, not quite finding a good window to attack that he judged would be worth it, “I can’t help but be disappointed! I expected a barbarian to be tougher! I especially expected someone I’ve heard so much about to be more than this!”

Leon ignored him. Duronius’ rantings about him meant nothing. At first.

“But I suppose I should hardly be surprised! You were one of Trajan’s little soldiers, weren’t you?!”

Duronius’ mace finally clipped Leon, sending him sprawling across the ground, only to slam into a stone wall that Duronius conjured that immediately bent and locked Leon in place.

“I hated that sanctimonious ass from the first moment I met him,” Duronius mumbled. “Always trying to pass judgment as if he were better than us. He may have been a Prince, but that means nothing! He ruled nothing, his title was empty as his ideals! Who was he to judge me?!” The Duke suddenly stopped himself and took a breath as Leon fought against the stone that restrained him. Leon didn’t care what Duronius said about him, but his comments about Trajan were starting to make his blood boil—a sentiment that began to seem more and more literal with every second that passed.

He felt a heat start to spread from his chest, a terrible, scorching heat that had his heart beating like it wanted to break free from its bony prison. Leon’s wrath grew in proportion to this heat, though whether it was causing it or was caused by it, he couldn’t say—this was no time for the kind of self-reflection that getting to the bottom of it required.

After clearing his throat, Duronius, looking almost embarrassed from his outburst, continued with the kind of light and breezy tone that was at complete odds with the battle raging all around them, “I’ll just send you to him, then. A worthless savage and the Prince that preferred his company to civilized men. You two were made for each other.”

Duronius stepped forward and raised his mace, clearly intending to bring it down upon Leon’s helmeted head.

But then, Leon practically exploded in fire, causing the Duke to reel back in surprise and primal terror. Fire poured from Leon’s body as if he were trying to emulate Xaphan, incinerating most of his armor’s Skyflax padding and overwhelming the complex fire enchantments in his armor.

But Leon wasn’t entirely aware of this happening. He was simply furious, and his magic power resonated within, and power began to erupt out of his soul realm like ash from a volcano. All of this power buried his senses until he was operating on an almost detached level, still in control but not quite seeing reality, not emotionally aware of what was happening to him.

His fury never left, though. In fact, it was stronger than ever. The only coherent thoughts in his head were that Duronius had to pay in blood for his comments about Trajan and that Leon couldn’t die mere hours after Lapis and the rest of the giants had sacrificed themselves for him.

He wouldn’t fall here. He couldn’t. Not before he found Naiad; not before he saw Elise again; not before he finally dealt with Valeria, her family, and ‘Lord Kamran’.

With a titanic roar, Leon shattered the stone holding him down and stood back up, sword in hand, fire streaming from the gaps in his armor. Around the core of his flaming blade was a hint of black, a candle-shaped shadow within the bright orange flame that was almost unnoticeable.

Duronius had never seen anything like this before, but he barely had the time to take a single step back before Leon swung his blade and launched a wave of fire surging toward the Duke. It was too wide to dodge, so Duronius summoned a wall of stone to protect himself. He just barely managed to get it formed in time, but Leon’s fire spilled over the edges and licked at his armor. The heat of the attack was scorching, even to the sixth-tier Duke, and he could feel his skin being seared and some of his silver hair burning, though neither were debilitating injuries.

A moment later, Leon appeared on Duronius’ left and extended his left arm, letting loose with a blast of fire that Duronius managed to block once more with a stone wall. This time, Duronius made the wall a little bigger and a little thicker to help block the flames, leaving him relatively unscathed.

He then turned to his left, expecting Leon to appear again to launch another blast of fire, but instead, a moment later something hit his wall of stone with enough force to send cracks spiderwebbing all over its surface. For a brief moment, Duronius felt a satisfied glee and he called upon his magic to repair and reinforce the wall, but then a reddish glow appeared in the cracks and the wall exploded into fiery bits. Duronius was showered with searing-hot and even melted stone.

The Duke screamed in pain as Leon’s fire enveloped him and completely obscured his vision. He circulated his magic, desperately fighting off Leon’s magic power that sought to break through his defenses and ravage his body, while at the same time he threw himself back, trying to get clear of the fire.

After taking a few steps, he spared just enough power to cause half a dozen rock spikes to appear from the ground within the flames. A second later, the fire cleared, revealing the stone spikes impaling nothing but empty air. There wasn’t even a hint of blood to be found.

Then, with a clap of thunder, Leon appeared behind the Duke, his body no longer covered in flames, but instead with blindingly bright silver-blue lightning dancing across his battered armor. With a flash of light, Leon’s blade bit into the gap in Duronius’ armor behind his knee, easily drawing blood and sending this peculiar lightning surging into the Duke’s body.

Duronius felt his body seize up as pain became his entire existence. He felt nothing but the excruciating sensation of Leon’s lightning tearing his leg apart from the hip down, but after a few seconds, his earth magic managed to suppress it.

By then, however, Leon had already grabbed Duronius’ dominant arm and squeezed, bending many of the overlapping metal plates that formed the gauntlet and letting his lightning magic flow into the Duke’s arm. Much of it was blocked by the armor’s defensive enchantments, but enough got through that Duronius’ arm locked and he shrieked again in pain.

At this point, any trace of the cocky and arrogant noble was gone, replaced only with pain and desperation. It was such a sudden reversal that Duronius couldn’t comprehend it. It was utterly lost on him as his fight-or-flight instincts kicked in.

But before he could do anything, Leon pulled back and conjured a silver-blue bolt of lightning in his left hand, then slammed it into the Duke like he was thrusting with a spear.

The lightning exploded across the Duke’s armor, charring it black, destroying many of its enchantments, burning his torso, and throwing him back like he was something fished out one of the surrounding swamps. Duronius hit the ground hard enough to bounce back up, then roll for another few dozen feet.

By now, their fight had attracted a great deal of attention, and seeing their Lord in such a state, four high-ranking knights and a noble that Leon couldn’t identify ran forward to stand between Leon and the Duke; all were sixth-tier.

That meant nothing to Leon in his current state, and before any of these newcomers could blink, he was upon them.

His first target was the one with the weakest aura, relatively speaking. He seemed like a light mage, but Leon wasn’t able to verify that before his blade slid beneath the rim of the knight’s helmet and sliced clean through his throat.

“NO!” shouted the knight standing next to them, and with a wave, he conjured a wall of ice spikes that rocketed forth to impale Leon.

With a clap of thunder and a flash of silver-blue light, Leon vanished, reappearing next to the knight. He slammed his gauntleted fist into the knight’s faceplate, creating an explosion of silver-blue lightning powerful enough to break the knight’s neck with the impact. It was an instant kill, despite the knight’s towering aura and magic power flowing through his body. None of it, not even his lightly enchanted armor, was able to stand against Leon’s potent lightning.

“GET HIS GRACE!” screamed the noble as he lunged forward, his spear perfectly placed to penetrate the small gap in Leon’s armor at his armpit.

But, as before, Leon dodged with an accompanying thunderclap that left the noble deafened, then practically vanished and reappeared in front of him, his Adamant metal blade stabbing into the noble’s midsection. The force of Leon’s strike had his sword piercing clean through the noble’s plate armor, underlying mail, and gambeson padding.

The noble dropped, his body unable to deal with the amount of silver-blue lightning that Leon poured into him. His body convulsed, his eyes turned red as his veins ruptured, and his muscles seized up, causing him to curl up into the fetal position.

The remaining two knights, having just watched three of their comrades be taken out in a matter of seconds despite their power, realized that if they continued to stand against Leon—whose terrifying aura barely seemed weakened at all by his exertions—they’d be dispatched just as quickly.

So they didn’t. Instead, they turned and used every available drop of mana they had in their bodies to reach the collapsed Duronius as quickly as they could, picked him up between them, and began carrying him away from Leon.

Leon almost gave chase. It would’ve been so easy, especially with the sheer amount of power flowing through him. But something distracted him—a shout, one made by a feminine voice and full of distress.

That one cry managed to pierce Leon’s furious haze, and he suddenly became aware of his surroundings again. His tunnel vision that had been so focused on Duronius and the other knights that had challenged him widened, and he took in the state of the battle that had been raging all around them.

Duronius may have been terribly injured and been carried away, but the cavalry charge he’d led had been extraordinarily successful, at least against the group that Leon had been leading. Most of the knights and men-at-arms that had fallen in with Leon earlier in the battle had been struck down, and few had managed to inflict serious casualties upon the Duke’s heavily armored knights.

Leon’s core group—Anzu, Valeria, Alix, Marcus, and Alcander—weren’t doing much better. Alcander was injured, his left arm covered in blood that seeped out of his armor. Marcus’ helmet had been knocked off his head, and he had a large gash along his cheek. Valeria and Anzu seemed to be doing relatively fine, but both were obviously tired, and their auras were flagging. Alix had been the one shouting at Leon, and as he took everything in, she kept calling out to him, shouting for help.

Leon grimaced, unable to abandon any of them, not even Valeria. Perhaps especially Valeria. There was no way he was going to leave them behind, not on the same day that he’d lost Lapis.

With one last regretful look at the retreating Duke Duronius and with the knowledge that he could catch the Duke right now if he were to choose to do so, Leon screamed in frustration, then launched himself into the air, landing like a bolt of lightning in front of his people and hurling back many of their assailants with silver-blue lightning. In doing so, he was letting the Duke get away, but he was more aware now than ever after the events of the day where his priorities ought to be.

With a few swings of his blade, Leon sent blasts of the Thunderbird’s lightning careening into the ranks of Duronius’ cavalry, killing horses and mutilating their riders. One errant blast even fried the corpse of Duronius’ bull, which had been rather unceremoniously killed by Anzu.

Leon’s show of power forced back Duronius’ knights, but only for a moment. They surged back out again after a few seconds to steel their nerves.

But again, with a few blasts of lightning expelled from his blade, Leon inflicted serious casualties and forced the survivors back.

For a moment, it seemed like the knights would make another push. They certainly had the numbers to do so. Their charge had even broken through Leon’s line in several other places, so it would’ve been easy to surround him and bring him down that way—theoretically, at least, but few of the knights were willing to test that theory out by being the first to charge again.

But then, any thoughts of doing so were dashed as horns sounded from the north. Through the camp came barreling dozens of Augustine horsemen, not as heavily armored as Duronius’ knights, but more than armed and numerous enough to instill panic. Almost without pause, Duronius’ knights began to fall back, and without Duronius there to stop them, that retreat quickly turned into a full rout as the Augustine forces hit them in the back.

Leon didn’t join in. Instead, he stood there, in front of his people and between them and the retreating knights, appearing calm and collected and completely in control, but behind the face of his helmet, he was desperately gasping for breath as the strain of using so much power finally got the better of him.

“Leon!” Alix called out, sensing that something was wrong since Leon wasn’t pursuing their fleeing enemies, as was his wont. Anzu and Valeria, too, realized that fact and rushed forward. Anzu got there first and enveloped Leon in his wings.

Calling his helmet back into his soul realm revealed Leon’s terrible condition to the others. His face was pale and ashen gray—rather, those parts of his face that weren’t horribly burned were ashen gray. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, and after a moment of staring off after the retreating knights, he turned to look at Valeria as she ran forward, then collapsed without another word.

Anzu tried to catch him with his wings, but all he succeeded in doing was slowing Leon’s fall enough that Valeria was able to catch him. She pulled him in close, her new fifth-tier strength allowing her to hold the relatively tall, well-built, and armored Leon with ease. However, she still slowly sank to the ground under the weight of Anzu’s accusing stare, the albino griffin’s blood-red eyes glaring at her as she held Leon close.

She could feel the griffin’s killing intent and his silent demand to remove her hands from Leon’s body. She’d already tasted his wrath before, and she wasn’t eager to repeat the experience, despite now wearing her armor.

But then Alix, Marcus, and Alcander ran up, dissipating that tension as Alix got under one of Leon’s arms.

“Come on!” she shouted. “Let’s get him out of here!”

Valeria silently nodded, but after a moment of looking around, she looked back to Anzu.

“Get him on his griffin! Our horses are dead, but Anzu can get him out of here quicker than we can!”

“Right!” Alix agreed, and for just a moment, Valeria felt something that felt like approval coming from Anzu before the terrible naturally predatory expression returned to his avian face.

“What about… us…?” Marcus gasped, the day’s exertions finally catching up with him.

The eyes of the others turned to Valeria. She was still Leon’s second-in-command, after all, even if Marcus out-ranked, her socially.

She stared at Marcus for a moment wondering why he was leaving the decision to her, and after some thought, she said, “Let the others chase Duronius down. For us, the battle was over as soon as Leon collapsed.”

Marcus and Alcander glanced at the Augustine cavalry galloping past them with something that resembled regret, but in the end, they agreed with Valeria.

At the very least, even if they weren’t there to assist in striking the final blow, the battle had still been won. August’s main forces had been freed from the siege, and Duronius had been put to flight after taking devastating losses.